


The Story Is This

by CuteAsAMuntin



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, But more of an internal fix-it for Jaskier than an external one, Episode Fix-It: s01e06 Rare Species, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion Friendship, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg - Freeform, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Mostly show canon with a smattering of inspiration from game canon, Pining, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species, Romantically At Least, Self-Esteem Issues, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Friendship, Unrequited Love, friends to strangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29302830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuteAsAMuntin/pseuds/CuteAsAMuntin
Summary: In consideration of the disaster that was his last adventure with the witcher, Jaskier changed one small thing in the official sheet music forHer Sweet Kissbefore submitting it. Then he decided it was time to get his own life.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 18
Kudos: 126
Collections: The Witcher Files





	The Story Is This

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks a ton to SarcasmCloud from the Toss A Coin to Your Witcher server for betaing!

_If this is the path I must trudge,_   
_I’ll welcome my sentence, give to you my penance  
Garroter, jury, and judge_

When he’d gotten around to filing the ballad with the Oxenfurt Academy library, he’d changed the official lyrics from the ones he’d been drunkenly crooning in every tavern and inn that promised him a moment of distraction on his way back to the university. It had been a simple enough exchange, “my hangman” for “garroter.” Admittedly slightly less elegant lyrical structure, but the scansion matched and it gave the line a nice little flavour of possessiveness. Most importantly, “hangman” sounded nothing like “Geralt.”

He left the city quickly, afterwards. He knew that he was weak, prone to fits of maudlin and pessimism if he stayed still for long enough to get introspective. If he stayed, it would only be a matter of time before he was offered a lecture series or some court position, which would inevitably trap him for another fruitless, embarrassing decade pining after people who could never love him. Best to go a-wandering once more and find his new muse the old-fashioned way.

He allowed himself to be sexily tragic for a bit longer first, of course. All his small loves had always been a wonderful distraction, making the heartbreak of rejection by every countess or witcher whom he’d so foolishly loved with his whole self a nearly bearable experience. 

\- - -

The thing about it was, Jaskier was really quite popular when he wasn’t tagging along after a sour-tempered old man like a second shadow. Well-liked and regarded on his own merit as a musician and entertainer, even. Just because one foul-mouthed, white-haired arsehole couldn’t stand him didn’t mean he wasn’t sought-after in most of the civilised world. He wandered rather than settling in a court by _choice_ , as difficult as that had been for the deplorable beast to believe when Jaskier made such assurances on the road. How else did the miserable, sexy bastard think Jaskier wrote tavern hit after court favourite about his gruesome adventures based on nothing but two-word answers and observations made from two hundred meters back?

All that to say, Jaskier wasn’t altogether surprised when Alonso Wiley left his brothel to him as a gift on his passing. Aside from Jaskier’s own loyal patronage of the Rosemary and Thyme’s working boys and girls, Wiley had always been a wonderful patron of the arts himself. That hadn’t stopped his son’s wild and colourful accusations as to the circumstances of Jaskier being willed the establishment, of course. Thankfully, Zoltan had stepped in to rescue Jaskier from the Novigrad dungeons. Then, Dijkstra had applied a judicious amount of blackmail to the appropriate authorities before the Temple Guards could interrogate the bard on a wildly mixed bag of charges including sodomy and Scoia’tael sympathising.

“Honestly, who do they think I am?” Jaskier asked while reading the Guard papers Dijkstra had confiscated, clutching at his collar and fixing a nearly innocent gaze on his handler in mock-horror.

Dijkstra’s gaze brushed up Jaskier’s bare legs and exposed torso. The spymaster leaned back as if for a better look at the joining of their bodies, then considered the bard’s face, all flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes after a half hour spent warming his prick. “Dandelion, you _are_ a Scoia'tael sympathiser.”

“Well that’s hardly the point, is it?” Jaskier sniffed, kicking at the silken hose pooled around his ankles.

There was no denying he was a broken-hearted, shameful fool, had been for all the years he spent devoted to a wretched creature for whom he’d been nothing but a short-lived nuisance. At least he’d made something of himself besides an annoyance during all that time. Now he would be a rich fool running his own tavern, serving in the Redanian Intelligence, and gathering plenty of material for new songs that had nothing to do with a particularly cantankerous old mutant.

\- - -

The bard was well-wrung of his emotional outpouring from _Her Sweet_ bloody _Kiss_ when he crossed the sorceress’s path again. He’d heard wild rumours of the battle at Sodden Hill from his contacts in the Temerian army, of the charred remains of the Nilfgaardian forces still smoking as they clashed with survivors on a meadow reduced to ash. He’d written four different epics of the triumphant victory and one petticoat-dropping mourning poem to honour the fallen Temerians and mages—even if the Brotherhood were a right bunch of bastards, they were important allies and good customers.

So, when he nearly slammed into her while walking back to his rooms at the Chameleon—as he and Zoltan had renamed the place after converting it from a brothel to a tavern—from the market, and she said, “Heard the song you wrote about me,” he simply beamed that fifty-candle-power entertainer’s smile right at her and betrayed nothing.

“About the heroic last stand at Sodden? Which one? I assume you don’t mean the funeral dirge, seeing as you aren’t dead yourself. Unfortunately. Are you?” He flapped his free hand in her direction. “I wouldn’t mind some firsthand details though, if you’re available.” Perhaps he would actually learn something useful to report to Dijkstra about the Brotherhood’s current state. The witch had always underestimated him.

She advanced a half-step. “You know I meant the other blasted song, you horrible little man.” Her tone was still so casual, expression almost bored.

“Well that wasn’t actually about you at all, now was it, witch?” he asked pleasantly. “I’m staying at the Chameleon, if you decide to stop by. The people deserve to know what that victory cost, and by all accounts, you must indeed have been glorious.”

Her full lips twisted in a pained grimace, the expression there and gone so quickly that Jaskier might have imagined it. Nonetheless, he received the mage in his office that evening. In exchange for uncorking several bottles of his best vintage, she told the least self-aggrandising and most desperate version of the tale he’d heard yet, of peasants and magic-users working side by side to hold off the black army until Foltest’s forces could arrive in the face of almost-certain failure. To his keen historian’s ear, it was also likely the truest.

Yennefer made it seem as if her sacrifice and display of incredible control over Chaos in the end were nothing. The bard wrote a four-part song cycle based on her telling. It prominently featured a violet-eyed sorceress unleashing her unbelievable power to destroy the fools who dared threaten people and power she had claimed as her own. He rather hoped she liked it.

\- - -

If _Toss a Coin to Your Witcher_ had begun Jaskier on the road to fame, then _The Lion Cub of Cintra_ had cemented his place of renown. Even if he hadn’t felt a duty to that thrice-damned moron’s Child Surprise, he would have gladly returned to the Cintran court every year for the princess Cirilla’s birthday.

A year after Cintra fell, he hadn’t even realized he’d missed the date, deep undercover as he was in his role as triple agent: pretending to steal information from a Nilfgaard-sympathising Novigradian house to Redania, while actually sharing Redanian secrets with the Nilfgaardians, but in fact he was feeding false Redanian intelligence to Nilfgaard and sharing both the Nilfgaardians’ false messages and any real information he could glean with his handler.

It was all terribly confusing if he thought about it too hard, so he’d spent most of his free time writing dirty limericks and seducing as many of the estate’s servants as possible to stave off the inevitable headache instead. Thus, he also neatly managed to avoid wondering if the little lion cub had survived her country’s sacking, surely no thanks to her sorry excuse for a substitute father figure. She’d been a precocious child. Took after her mother. She was probably fine.

He was nonetheless pleased to learn, on his next chance encounter with Yennefer—though how chance it was, considering she’d portaled into Oxenfurt right outside the hall he’d just been in to give a guest lecture, was up for debate—that little Ciri had made it out alive and was doing quite well, all things considered.

“Trauma builds character. I mean, look at Geralt and I. She’ll be fantastically powerful,” the sorceress said into her Est Est.

Jaskier looked askance at her. “Now I know you’re fucking with me.”

“Am I, bard?”

“You seemed to have done alright to manage your… _you_ , but your witcher is the human equivalent of three bad djinn wishes stacked up under a cloak.”

That was apparently amusing enough to create the slightest crack in her composure. “That’s quite a good one. I’ll be using that. Don’t expect credit.”

“Wouldn’t want any,” he agreed placidly. He raised his flagon. “To motherhood?”

“Is that what this is?” The witch’s voice was almost mellow.

“Isn’t it? Destiny’s bound you to the crotchety brute, and him to her. You love each other, and you’re caring for her together. Sounds like a family to me.” He even managed to sound happy about it. He was, mostly. They clinked clay against glass and drained their cups. 

“You should come play at Kaer Morhen for her next birthday. She’d enjoy the company.”

“I may, at that!” he said agreeably. He absolutely would not. He had audiences and lovers and spymasters to please, and there were more stories to be told than those of a single bleeding-heart monster-hunter. Yen didn’t fight him on it.

\- - -

The people would remember that, once, a bard had followed their beloved White Wolf to immortalise his heroic journeys, and the Oxenfurt academics who cared about such things would connect the oft-sung tales with sheet music attributed to Julian Alfred Pankratz. The shame of Jaskier’s misguided desire for Geralt of Rivia, who had never been his friend, would die with him.

**Author's Note:**

> I was reminded on re-watching this past week that Marilka’s first comment on learning Geralt’s name is that it sounds like “garroter.” 
> 
> Then, in my excitement as we ramp up to the second season, I stumbled on an older article about how the showrunners insist that Jaskier Totally Is Not Queercoded, Jeez, We Have No Idea Why You Would Think That. I don’t need to see a romance bloom between the witcher and the bard on screen, by any means. I’m just rather galled that acknowledging the choices that have been made for Jaskier’s portrayal, the feminized traits and homoerotic jokes about Geralt’s “lovely bottom,” when we ask after them, is apparently too much. There’s something wrong with us for seeing something of ourselves in him.


End file.
